by Martin Seay
Bright streaks move beyond the windowglass: early flights taking off and landing at McCarran. Curtis yawns and watches their navigation lights—dim reds and greens—cross the Luxor’s beam. He closes his dry eyelids and imagines, for no good reason, the city as a living creature: the airport its mouth, sucking stars from the sky, spitting them back like husks. The roads and highways its veins and intestines. The Strip its aorta, or colon.
He wakes not much later to the sound of the fax machine and to the night outside gone blue. His uncomfortable forehead has come to rest on the cool wood of the tabletop. He stumbles as he stands, draws the curtain with a jerk, shrugs off the white robe, and falls into bed without bothering to check the fax. Recalling nothing of it when he next stirs, which is shortly before noon.
No memory of dreams, or of dreaming. He rises with a gasp, as if he’s just nodded off. Looks at the clock, curses, slides from bed. Picks up his jeans, pulls them on. Stands in the middle of the room. Breathing hard, certain that he’s late, that he’s slept through something. Gradually remembering otherwise. Remembering yesterday like he watched it happen to somebody else. He sits on the edge of the rack and pulls his trousers off again, slowly.
He draws back the curtains. Flat hazy light. Thick Saturday crowds below, thronging sidewalks and bridges, shooting photos of the belltower, the boats, the twin columns. Curtis switches on the TV: Bush and Blair meeting in the Azores, a kidnapped girl rescued, some new disease in China. No bombs dropping yet.
He’s in the shower when he hears the cellphone ring; he can’t get to it in time. Wrapped in his towel, dripping on the carpet, he’s surprised to see he’s missed three calls: Danielle, Albedo, his father.
Danielle’s voicemail is fake-cheerful, a little sheepish, scared underneath. Much as I hate to spoil a good fight, it says, I’d like it if you’d call me when you get the chance. Just so I know you’re still breathing, and not locked up. Trying to plan my week, is all. I love you, Sammy D. Don’t do anything stupid.
Curtis erases the message, and Albedo’s voice comes through the phone. Hope you got plenty of beautysleep last night, it says. My girl Espeja was real disappointed y’all didn’t get to get better acquainted. But I’m glad you and I could catch up on old times. Reminisce a bit. Hey, you find your skip yet? I think maybe I got some leads. Gimme a call.
Then his father. I hope you’re staying out of trouble, Little Man. I been thinking about what you said yesterday, and I remembered something, somebody you ought to get in touch with. Back in the old days when Stanley and I would go to Vegas, we’d meet up with this Japanese fellow Stanley knew from California, name of Walter Kagami. He was a cardsharp back in the day—professional gambler, just like Stanley—but I think he gave it up. Last I heard he’s still living out there, managing some locals joint. Place is called Quicksilver, I think. I don’t believe you ever met Walter. You’d’ve been real young. Haven’t talked to the man in years myself. But I think maybe Stanley still keeps in touch. Just a thought. Hope it helps. Anyhow. Love you, kid. Mawiyah sends her love too. You watch your back out there.
Curtis drops his towel and picks up a pen and notepad. He writes down Kagami’s name, and the name of the casino, and is going through drawers for a phonebook when he spots last night’s fax in the machine, the SPECTACULAR! logo visible upsidedown at its bottom.
Flattened on the desk, Damon’s blocky handwriting:
Albo al be
Beddow a bedo cool.
Let him help.
Proggress???????
Below the message, another cartoon Curtis, staring in bug-eyed horror at an oversize stopwatch in his left hand while frantically jerking himself off with his right. The pupil of the left eye grotesquely askew. The enormous ejaculating penis heavily shaded, minutely detailed.
Curtis flushes the bits down the toilet on his way out the door.
10
The taxi that picks him up has jazz on the radio—“Invisible,” from the first Ornette album—and this puts Curtis somewhat at ease. He stretches his legs as they turn right on the Strip; the cab’s interior smells like cigarettes and mint.
The driver is Middle Eastern, in his late fifties, with a full head of gypsum-white hair. Careful and patient behind the wheel. He has an air of certainty that Curtis envies. The ID card in the backseat gives his name as Saad; Curtis can’t make out the last name without staring, and he doesn’t want to stare.
So how are you doing? the cabbie wants to know.
Not too good, Curtis says. Can’t seem to get anything started.
The cabbie aims an accusatory finger at the Mirage on their left. You are smart to leave the Strip, he says. Very smart.
Oh yeah?
It is true. It is always good to move around. People always say, oh, my luck is good, oh, my luck is bad. But places have luck too. The casino has luck. Everyone forgets this. If the casino is being lucky—if the dealers are hot, as you say—then you must go someplace else. Not to do so is foolish.
I guess that’s right.
The stoplight on Industrial Road catches them. Chartered buses pass by. The radio rolls Ornette Coleman into Art Pepper. Curtis looks down again at the ID card. Your name’s Saad? Curtis says.
Yes. Saad. That is correct.
You a Muslim, Saad?
The driver shoots him a hard look in the rearview: flinty eyes, deeply lined from squinting. Why do you ask me this, my friend? he says. You are from the Homeland Security Department, maybe. You think I blow up your casino with my taxicab.
No, no. I just—my dad is a Muslim. And he won’t set foot in this town.
Ah. I see. Islam says no gambling.
Saad flips on his turn signal, merges onto the northbound lanes of the interstate. I am Muslim, he says. But I sometimes like to play roulette. And sometimes also the video poker. And I like to drink a glass of wine. I do not pray very often as I should. So maybe I am not a very good Muslim. Your father is Muslim, you say?
That’s right.
Like Malcolm X?
Yeah, sure, I guess.
Or Muhammad Ali? Kareem Abdul-Jabbar?
More like Ahmad Jamal.
Ahmad Jamal! Yes! Very good. Or Tupac Shakur?
No, Curtis laughs. Not like Tupac Shakur. I don’t think Tupac was a Muslim. His mom was, maybe.
You like jazz? Saad reaches for the radio, turns it up a little. Cool jazz? Bebop?
Sure. My dad plays jazz. He plays the bass.
Saad drums along with Philly Joe Jones on the battered steering wheel for a few bars before he speaks again. I was working on the Strip the night they shot Tupac Shakur, he says. I was less than one mile away.
Is that so.
I did not hear the shots. But I saw the police arrive. The ambulance. The black car, full of holes. It was a terrible sight.
Curtis doesn’t respond. He’s looking out the window, not really seeing anything, remembering. Ladder drills on the practice field at Dunbar. The smell of new grass crushed underfoot. Sirens everywhere. Policecars speeding down Florida toward Adams-Morgan. Helicopters in the air, circling. The assistant principal jogging out, waving to Coach Banner. More than twenty years ago now. Twenty-two, this month.
Many people come to this city to die, Saad is saying.
Yeah, well. I don’t think that’s exactly what Tupac had in mind. I think he just wanted to catch the Tyson fight.
Maybe this is so. Who can say?
Saad’s turn signal clicks again; he’s exiting at Lake Mead Boulevard, turning right, toward Nellis and Sunrise Manor. The white spires of the Mormon temple gleam in the distance. Frenchman Mountain looms beyond.
Maybe your father is smart, Saad says, or is wise, maybe, to think of these things. Everything in this city is made by gambling. Yes? It builds the buildings. It builds the roads. It pays the people. It pays me. All of these things. And always with gambling there is death. You see?
Okay.
This is why we gamble. To face what is uncertain. To confront the un
known, the great unknown. You make your wager. The wheel spins. What will happen? To gamble is to prepare for death. To rehearse. This is the appeal.
You do this rap for all your fares, Saad?
Saad cackles, a rough smoker’s laugh, slapping his palm on the wheel. Only for you, my friend! Only for you. Because you are a serious man. Concerned with serious things. I know this about you. It is in your eyes.
Curtis smiles, doesn’t respond.
Or the man who died here last year! Saad continues, picking up a dropped thread. The Englishman. The rock star.
I don’t know who that is.
The Ox. The one who stands very still.
A thin electronic rendition of “La Marseillaise” is playing below the radio: the ringtone of Saad’s cell. Forgive me, he says, and answers it. Speaking first in English, then switching to Arabic. Curtis tries to follow but soon gives up; some phrases sound familiar, but he can’t recall their meanings. The cab rolls through the light at Pecos Road, passing over the depleted river in its concrete channel. Fewer houses on the sidestreets now. A low roar of jet engines overhead. Curtis settles back in his seat, tries to relax, to think. To get his mind back on Stanley.
But Stanley is slippery, and seems to go everywhere, spinning Curtis back onto himself. His father. Kagami. Los Angeles, in the late Fifties. Art Pepper, dragging himself into the Contemporary studios, white junkie with a dried-up horn, Band-Aid on the broken cork. Pepper was an MP too, Little Man. A prison guard, in London during the war. Columns of orange flame off to the north. The sky burnt black at two in the afternoon. Oily poisoned rain. Ijlis. Sit down. Inhad. Stand up. Sa tuffattash ilaan. Now you will be searched.
Saad is still on the phone, becoming more animated, shuffling in bits of English and French: orange alert, Air Canada, maison de passe, Flamingo Road, dépanneur, oh my god, the Aladdin, une ville lumière, he’s a shithead, forget about him. An F-15 passes directly overhead; Curtis can’t see it, but he knows the sound of the engines. They’re due south of the airbase now, nearing the northeastern edge of the valley. Ranks of white stucco houses topped with orange mission-tiles perch on the foothills ahead, crowding the borders of the government land.
Curtis is wondering if Saad is distracted, if maybe they’ve missed their turn, when they veer onto a sidestreet just past a Terrible Herbst gas station on the corner of North Hollywood Boulevard. The neighborhood is getting anonymous, purely residential; the houses are bigger, newer, farther apart, and suddenly there are none to be seen at all, only steep gated driveways sprouting off the road. The taxi’s transmission downshifts as they climb past cleared gravel pits and an old cement plant, winding slowly through slumps and dry washes and mounds of talus stanched by gabions. Then they crest a rise on a sickening turn and the entire valley is arrayed before them: a sea of roofs and palmtrees, the Strip towers flanked by the Luxor and the Stratosphere, the snows of Mount Charleston in the distance, white blotches hung in midair, the mountain itself vanished in the afternoon haze.
A flashing traffic signal comes into view—a two-lane road with a wide shoulder, cars towing fiberglass boats—but Saad hangs a sharp left before they get there, into a fresh and narrow roadcut marked by a blond limestone sign: QUICKSILVER CASINO & RESORT. The parking area is modest, crescent-shaped, following the curve of the hillside; it’s at maybe a quarter capacity, with Cadillacs and Town Cars and the odd Lexus or Mercedes clustered near the top. Wheelchair ramps stretch downhill like exposed roots, and the handicapped spaces are all full.
They bypass the parking lot and roll up to the entrance: a massive oak portico held aloft by thick columns of smooth riverstone orbs. A little pack of bluehaired white ladies is waiting in the shade, bingo bags and plastic coinpails dangling from their folded hands. A green-and-white placard by the entrance says FIND YOUR POT O’ GOLD AT QUICKSILVER! ST. PATRICK’S DAY IS MARCH 17TH.
Saad is ending his call. We have arrived, my friend, he says. This place will be lucky for you, I think.
It’s farther out than I thought, Curtis says, digging some of Damon’s cash from his wallet.
There is nothing farther. Government land, and then the lake. That is all.
I didn’t think you could build up here.
Saad shrugs. What can you pay? he says. Who is your friend? You can do what you want.
Curtis hands the folded bills over the seat and Saad takes them with practiced ease, watching Curtis in the rearview mirror. Smiling conspiratorially with his eyes. As if they share some secret knowledge about the world.
Curtis opens his door, steps out, leans back in. Hey, Saad, he says. You got a business card?
11
He glances at the card as the cab is pulling away: SAAD ABOUGREISHA, it says, and a phone number.
The sidewalk beneath Curtis’s feet, which had looked like mortared flagstones from inside the car, is really some kind of springy padding composited from shredded rubber; it gives a little under his weight. He rocks back and forth on his heels, testing the surface, thinking of the deck of the physical therapy room at the Naval Hospital in Bethesda, where he first met Danielle.
A boxy shuttlebus sporting the Quicksilver logo—a jazzed-up Indian pictograph of a raven in flight: gaping beak, gleaming reflective eye—pulls into the space Saad vacated. A group of old people exits the bus with the help of a pair of minders, young kids with big smiles and loud voices. The ones standing under the portico wait patiently to board. Curtis watches all this for a while, not sure what he’s looking for. Then he turns and walks to the entrance.
The Quicksilver is high-class for a neighborhood joint: small, rustic, more country club than bingo parlor or shopping mall. The building looks like an Anasazi cliffpalace reworked by Frank Lloyd Wright: lots of exposed beams and slender limestone blocks. The whole thing’s built around an old quarry or open-pit mine, now converted into a sunken courtyard with a pond and a waterfall and a recirculating fountain in the middle. Through the bow window behind the gaming pit Curtis can see madrones and junipers, pergolas twined with wisteria and passionflower, the towering blooms of a couple of century-plants. A halfdozen plump guineafowl peck at the rubber sidewalks, and aside from them the courtyard is deserted.
Kagami is running late, stuck in a meeting, so Curtis gets a cup of grapefruit juice and plays a little blackjack to pass the time. The dealers are fresh-faced, easygoing, slow with the cards. Most of the action is at the machines and in the large bingo room; there are only four tables. Curtis’s sole companion is an elderly gentleman wearing a silk neckerchief and an oxygen mask. There’s a separate area for high rollers behind the bar, dim and sunken, and it’s busier than Curtis would have expected for a joint this far out of town. The players down there look like whales: East Asian heavyweights, the kind of guys who keep casinos in business. From time to time their cheers and shouts rise over the new-age flute music on the PA. Somebody like Stanley Glass could walk in and tear this place apart inside of an hour, Curtis thinks. Which is probably why the owners hired somebody like Walter Kagami as the manager.
Saad’s prediction is coming true: Curtis is up by nearly four hundred dollars when he feels a gentle hand on his shoulder. Mister Stone? Mister Kagami’s very sorry for the delay. If you’d like to wait in his office, he’ll meet you there in a few minutes.
Kagami’s office is small, cluttered, tucked away off the gaming floor. Nice oak desk. Navaho rug over scuffed parquetry. Picture window with a southern view: the Boulder Highway, toward Henderson and the dam. A sink and a tiny closet. A little slept-on couch. On a patch of bare wall between two overflowing bookcases hangs a column of old photographs, and Curtis spots his father’s laughing face in one. It looks like it was taken at the Trop; the clothes and the eyewear seem to put it in the late ’70s, though with gamblers it can be hard to tell. Curtis’s dad is posed with an aloof-looking Stanley, an Asian guy who must be Kagami, some men Curtis doesn’t recognize, and, in the middle, Sammy Davis, Jr. Curtis blinks, leans closer, touches the frame. Smiling
wryly. Thinking of Danielle: her favorite pet name for him. But his smile collapses, and he starts to feel uneasy. Self-conscious. Fraudulent. Like he’s performing as expected for the benefit of some unseen audience. Or for himself.
He shifts his attention to the shelves. Math and physics paperbacks with drab two-tone covers. Thick illustrated works on American Indian art and archaeology. Books on the history, the economy, the architecture of Las Vegas. A Peterson’s guide to western birds. A Jane’s guide to aircraft identification. Everything ever written on card counting, including fifteen different printings of Edward Thorp’s Beat the Dealer, most from prior to the 1966 revision.
A voice from behind him: That’s the book that started it all, you know.
Curtis has been standing with the door in his blindspot and didn’t see Kagami come in. He curses inwardly, tries not to register surprise. I read it a long time ago, he says, turning around. An old copy of my dad’s. I don’t remember it too well. I never had too much of a head for that stuff.
You know where that guy is these days? Ed Thorp, I mean?
Curtis shakes his head.
Take a wild guess. Shot in the dark. C’mon.
The yellow-edged paperback that Curtis was looking at protrudes slightly from the shelf; he extends a blunt finger, pushes its cracked spine flush with those of its siblings. Wall Street? he says.
See? Kagami says, grinning, moving into the room. You always were a smart kid.
Kagami is about Curtis’s height, stocky, in good shape for his age—probably older than his dad by a couple of years, though he looks younger. Gray herringbone trousers, brown tweed jacket, fawn shirt, classy tie with a gold pin. A pokerplayer’s tinted eyeglasses. Big rings on both hands. He gives Curtis’s upper arm a friendly squeeze as they shake. Last time I saw you, Kagami says, you were probably about six years old. You’re looking good, real good. You’re a married man now, I hear.
